Maybe If Maybe
by ellabellbee
Summary: It was just a wine bottle. Or rather, it was supposed to just be a wine bottle. But really, Pete knew from both personal and Warehouse experience, that a wine bottle is never just one bottle. Of course, his bottles of wine never quite ended up like… this. (Written for fic exchange. Prompt: Bacchanalia. Takes place somewhere in the first half of season 4) (Bering & Wells)


**Takes place somewhere in the first half of season 4. Written for Myka-Wells for theholidayaisle fic exchange run on tumblr and ao3. Check out the collection on ao3 for more great fics.**

* * *

**Bacchanalia:** plural capitalized :  
** 1.** a Roman festival in honour of Bacchus  
** 2.** a drunken feast with dancing, song, and revelry; orgy

* * *

It was just a wine bottle.

Or rather, it was _supposed_ to just be a wine bottle. But really, Pete knew from both personal and Warehouse experience, that a wine bottle is never just one bottle. Of course, his bottles of wine never quite ended up like… _this._

* * *

There were dozes of ways that this whammy would not have happened. If Artie hadn't been running late for his flight to Atlanta, or if he hadn't been going at all. If the snag that he and Myka were on hadn't taken them to a vineyard in the south of Italy. If Claudia and Steve weren't also already in Europe, and so had given him a convenient way to swap out.

Maybe if he and Steve hadn't taken _way_ longer on their own snag than they should have — or if the four of them hadn't promised to fly home together, letting Myka and Claudia spend a few extra days in wine country. (Of course, it's not like they ended up on the same flights anyway.)

Or maybe if Steve hadn't gotten that sinus infection, grounding him in England until he was well enough to fly again. And then if Pete hadn't been able to move up his flight because he was then travelling alone...

Or maybe, the biggest **maybe** of all, maybe if that wasn't the weekend that HG swung through Univille on an errand for the Warehouse, or the Regents, or whomever she was working for these days. He still wasn't _quite_ sure exactly what she did, other than pass through every once in a while and make Myka simultaneously happy and mopey, and then just mopey for a week after that… but that wasn't the point.

If Artie had been at the Warehouse when HG stopped by, or if Artie had been the one to unpack the crates from Italy, or if Pete had just toughed it out on that mission and stayed in wine country, perhaps finding a meeting along the way. If the artefact wasn't something to do with one of the Roman gods, or if Myka and Claudia hadn't spent a few extra days at the vineyard, or if Pete hadn't told everyone that he was held back with Steve and then managed to arrive home early anyway…

So really, there were dozens of things that would have prevented the crate of wine from Myka and Claudia's Italian adventure from being unpacked by HG at the Warehouse with no context, and all of them thinking that Pete wasn't going to home for another day, so why not have a bunch of wine with dinner?

And now that it (whatever this whammy actually was) was happening, was he happy that he was around to stop it?

Or would he do _anything_ to sear the images from his mind?

* * *

Pete had just dropped his artefact off on Artie's desk, and was now back at the B&B, excited to see his partner and catch up on the most recent retrieval. He had noticed from Artie's office that HG was in town, and was even happy to see HG. Maybe he would get a few more days of overly chipper Myka.

The laughter coming from the dining room was far louder than he expected when he opened the door, though he wasn't really sure what the four girls did when he wasn't around. Pillow fights? He broke into a grin. Maybe he would try to just observe them for a while first, before spoiling their fun.

He crept the long away around and peeked in, but it wasn't what he imagined. Sure, Myka and HG were leaning a little too close to each other, and Claudia and Leena were laughing a little harder than normal, but nothing even came close to his imagination. But there were already three bottles of wine on the table between the four of them, so he figured he better pass on dinner. He had grabbed some food on the way home from the airport anyway.

With a heavy sigh, he turned around and headed towards the stairs, hoping to maybe get an early night.

* * *

He was slightly dozing when he heard the music and the rhythmic stomping of feet. His disappointment over the lack of pillow fights was still not far from his mind, but he could get certainly get behind a good old-fashioned dance party as a substitution. He rolled out of bed and softly padded down the stairs to where he could hear laughter, and he prepared himself to get pulled into the fun, but what he saw was… jarring.

It wasn't just that another bottle of wine had been added to the mix, or that the music seemed to be creating an energy that he had never quite seen the girls escalate to — it was that he wasn't quite prepared to see Myka and HG _that_ close on the makeshift dance floor.

He had seen them looking at each other in the past, with their gazes far deeper than anything he had ever shared with either of them. He had seen them lost in each other's eyes, exchanging full conversations without even a word. He had even caught them each staring at the other when the other wasn't looking, completely absorbed in whatever small or repetitive task the other was engaged in. But none of those moments compared to what he was seeing now.

The music was pounding and Leena and Claudia seemed absorbed in making a playlist (and were _they_ standing a bit closer than normal, too?) but nothing could compare to watching the way that HG and Myka seemed fused at the hips… or was it slightly lower than that?

And then it felt like he was rubbernecking at a car crash; it felt so wrong to be watching, but he couldn't look away.

The tempo of the music increased and Claudia and Leena joined into the jumping and the stomping and the excited arm movements and the other gesticulations, and Myka and HG seemed to meld even closer, each slipping a leg between the other two. He watched as HG — several inches shorter than Myka, now that she was no longer wearing her heeled boots — reached up and buried one hand into Myka's curls. The other snaked around Myka's neck, and Myka's own hands moved from being loosely placed on HG's hips to snaking around her waist and then caressing her back and —

And he really shouldn't be watching this. Right?

But he'd been watching the metaphorical dance that they had been doing for so long, that he felt like he had a vested interest in what happened. He was rooting for them, cheering them on. Plus, the way they were practically grinding up against each other in the middle of the B&B was kinda hot.

Except that now they actually were grinding, and he wasn't sure that he wanted to see the person that he regarded as a _sister_ like that. And then he saw HG's eyes flutter close, and their foreheads were resting together, and he was sure of what was about to happen any minute...

He was suddenly very thirsty, and needed to be anywhere but where he was right then. Pete spun on his heel, and went into the kitchen. He'd check in on them in a few minutes. For Claudia and Leena's sake, of course.

* * *

The noises from the living room were intensifying, and while he was content to just stay in the kitchen with his glass of water, he was starting to get a vibe. It wasn't even a _bad_ one, just one that was… odd. There was more energy to it than he normally felt, and to be honest, it was kind of… hot.

He paused at that. Was it just his body responding to the images of before? Or was it…

Pete stopped and glanced around the room, looking for anything out of place. Sure, there was some cleaning still to do from Leena's cooking, and there was one of the empty wine bottles on the counter — and he paused. Pete was all for liquid courage, and hey, good for Myka for finally acting on what she's been bottling up for so long, but was something else at play?

He reached out for the empty bottle and picked it, examining the label. It was written in Italian, and featured the name of the vineyard where Myka and Claudia ended up staying during and after their retrieval. He had seen the crate in Artie's office — clearly they had brought home some souvenirs, and he was grateful that they decided to indulge while he wasn't supposed to be there, but…

There was something that was setting off his spidey sense, but it wasn't until his finger touched the top of the bottle and a stray drop of the wine made contact that he was sure. He immediately took his finger away and put the bottle in a nearby static bag, making sure the drop of wine went in with it, but he wasn't sure it was enough. The tingling that he had begun to feel in his hand had stopped, but for that brief moment, he had been affected. He knew it. He had had immediately been overcome with the want to laugh, and drink, and dance, and sing, and… and bang.

He shook his head, clearing it as much as he could. If he felt that all from a drop, he couldn't even imagine what the others might be feeling now, especially if those feelings were being mixed with the alcohol. Though, if they had felt what he just did immediately, then the party would have progress far further than it already had. The artefact must be feeding off the energy, he realized. It was getting stronger, and would only continue to get stronger.

He immediately put on a pair of purple gloves, and hunted down the rest of the bottles, placing them all in separate static bags, shielding his eyes from the sparks that came off of every bottle. There was one more bottle, though, and that was back where the dance party was happening. He had to go in there anyway, but if there was still actual wine in the remaining bottle, he wasn't sure what to expect from the others when they were clearly still whammied.

He hesitated. The absolute _last_ thing he wanted was to get whammied as well, so he had to take extra precautions. He found a spare set of purple glasses, and instead of just a static bag, he grabbed the hidden canister of goo from beneath the sink. There. Now he was ready.

Except there was no way he was ready for what he was about to see in the other room.

* * *

Maybe if he had decided to announce his presence as soon as he got home, he could have stopped it. Maybe if he had actually looked at the crate in the Warehouse he would have gotten a vibe then. Maybe if he had pushed Myka in a certain direction long ago like he had both wanted and planned to, this wouldn't have been so shocking, or… out in the open.

Maybe if he hadn't been struck dumb at what was happening in the living room right away, he would at least have less material to keep him up at night… which was probably the most disturbing of them all, because he was still caught between being horrified at what he saw, ecstatic for Myka, and still kind of turned on. Dammit.

* * *

He came to the doorway and was shocked at the progression. Myka and HG were now full on making out in the middle of the dance floor (to which he gave Myka a mental high five), and they were still grinding in time with the music, but what really kept him in place was that it looked like Claudia and Leena were getting ready to join in.

The of them were grinding against each other — not with the same intensity as Myka and HG, but still, it was… and once again he was caught between thinking that it was hot and totally ashamed because those were his _sisters._

And then Claudia and Leena got closer to Myka and HG, and then there was some sort of shifting that he didn't quite catch, and then there were all four of them writhing against each other in some sort of frenzy as the music somehow got louder and faster and then there were _hands_ everywhere and then somehow Leena caught his eye and with a very exaggerated movement, then _winked_ at him.

It was like the artefact had glued him to the floor, but he knew it was just his own mind struggling to process what was actually happening. When she actually licked her lips at him, though, he sprung into action.

It was only maybe thirty seconds between when he crossed the floor, poured the remaining wine directly into the goo, and then sunk the bottle to the bottom of the canister, but it was enough. When the bottle stopped sparking and he turned around to see if it worked, he saw more than he should.

Because even though they were starting to disentangle themselves from each other, clothing had been shed, and hands had been… places.

He hastily looked away (though not before seeing HG try to dry a hand on her pants as Myka was doing up her fly, and Claudia reaching back to re-clasp her bra) and found something else to focus on, and used the next few moments to turn off the music.

When he heard HG clear her throat, he finally looked up. "So, uh, it appears you got whammied."

Myka answered. "It must have been the artefact we snagged in Italy — it was in a static bag, but had been shipped with the other bottles of wine."

Claudia nodded vigorously. "Totally an artefact. Nothing you wanted to see here, so we can all just take what happened and forget about it and not talk about it. Ever."

"Just another day working for the Warehouse," Pete replied.

Leena smiled. "Nothing to be ashamed about."

"Artie never has to know," Claudia added.

Pete exchanged nods with Claudia and Leena, but realized that his partner and HG hadn't said anything yet. Instead, they were staring at each other, having another of their silent conversations. He couldn't quite see HG's face, but he knew the look on Myka's. She was only a few comments away from breaking, and he did _not_ want that to happen.

"You know," he said, capturing Claudia and Leena's attention again. "I think I'm going to bring this straight to the Warehouse."

"I'll come with," Claudia said, catching on quickly. "I can tell you about the snag and we can see if we can figure out what happened."

Leena was already grabbing her coat. "I'll need to see if it has interfered with anything else. Claudia, you said it had to do with a Roman holiday?"

Claudia had already answered back, "yeah, a festival for the god of wine" by the time they got to the door, and Pete was the last one out.

The door was almost closed before he realized he forgot his keys, and he briefly turned back around, but again wished that he hadn't... though the kiss that he witnessed then was much more tentative and tender and honest than any of the others. With a smile, he went to the other waiting girls, and thought that maybe the whammy wasn't so bad after all.

* * *

If the bottle of wine from cult that still observed the holiday hadn't been found, if it hadn't duplicated its properties onto the other bottles that it was shipped with, if the girls hadn't all felt comfortable enough to have a few drinks while he was away, if Steve hadn't caught that cold, if Artie or Vanessa had been around, if **if ****_if…_**

If any of those things had gotten in the way, he wouldn't have to deal with his partner and her girlfriend being so obviously happy and in love. He wouldn't have to knock before entering every room in the B&B. He wouldn't have those images in his head…

But he didn't mind. And he wouldn't have had it any other way.


End file.
